A Game Of Vows Part 12

"I thought Selena and I might go down to the shops."

Only his mother would leave Barcelona and shop in a small, seaside town. "That sounds like fun."

Selena turned her attention to Hannah. "You can join us, if you like, Hannah."

Hannah looked like a large-eyed woodland creature caught in the pull of headlights. "I ... I ..."

"Hannah and I have work today." He didn't want to let her out of his sight for the day. She might run. "She's helping me implement some new systems at Vega. Hannah is something of a financial genius."

"Is that right?" Carmela asked, eyebrows raised.

"I've been busy the past five years," Hannah said, her tone soft. She was so subdued. It was very unlike her and he found he didn't care for it.

"Yes, well, that is commendable," his mother said. "We'll leave you two."

"Adis, Eduardo. Bye, Hannah," Selena said, standing with her mother and exiting the room.

"Your mother hates me," Hannah said when the women disappeared.

He shrugged. "Maybe."

Rafael returned with a fresh cup of coffee and a half-filled French press. "Gracias," Hannah said, taking a sip of her already-prepared coffee. Rafael left again and Hannah set her mug down. "I would rather if she didn't hate me, but I suppose it doesn't do any good for her to like me since I'm leaving again ... whenever. As soon as we get these systems in place and you feel comfortable."

"I suppose not." He found his body rebelled at the idea of her leaving. He felt possessive of her now. Stupid because before his accident he'd slept with any number of women and he'd never felt possessive of them. Quite the opposite, he'd felt ready to bolt out of bed, call them a cab and see they were safely delivered home so that he could sleep. Alone.

He frowned. The memories p.r.i.c.ked his conscience and he realized that he didn't like the way he'd treated women then. He wondered if that had to do with the accident, with the changes in him, or just being older.

Interesting, since he normally envied the man he'd once been to a certain extent. But not in that area. He'd been a playboy, happily seeking release with any willing woman. Now the emptiness of that echoed in him.

With Hannah it had been more. More than release. More than amus.e.m.e.nt. It had been something serious, something that made him feel different in the bright light of day. He was angry with her, for the way she'd acted after, and still, he felt a connection with her that hadn't been there before.

As if, when he'd parted from her last night, he'd left a piece of himself behind.

"What is the work plan for the day?" she asked, her expression projecting extreme annoyance and boredom at the same time.

"Bring your coffee up to my office."

She stood and waited for him, then followed him out of the room and up the curving staircase, down to the end of the hall. His home office faced the sea, large expansive windows letting in plenty of natural light. And all easily covered with blinds that dropped at the push of a b.u.t.ton. Just in case he got hit with a particularly bad migraine.

Fortunately, he felt fine. Which meant the only headache he would have to contend with was Hannah.

"Did you have anything more to show me?" she asked.

"No. I was hoping you would start presenting some solutions."

She shifted her weight to the b.a.l.l.s of her feet. She looked like she was ready to sprint away if need be. "Actually, I do have some solutions. Well, thoughts mainly."

"Do you?"

"Yes. You prefer to work here now?"

"It's noisy in the office. I don't care for it."

"Right, which is why you have your floor essentially vacant," she said slowly.

"Yes. I can't handle the noise of all the people talking all the time. Even without people working on the floor, the interruptions, the traffic, it can start to ..."

"It wears on you."

An understatement. The lowest moment in his memory was of throwing a mug at the wall in front of his secretary when she'd come in talking and he'd been in the throes of a migraine. It hadn't been aimed at her, and it hadn't come anywhere near her, but the blinding pain and anger ... the fact he'd had no control over it in that moment. That he'd frightened her. It lived with him.

She'd quit soon after and he couldn't blame her.

"I find things easier here," he said, looking at his hands.

Hannah frowned. "Did you have trouble working around people before?"

"I just don't like noise," he said.

"What about it?"

He looked out at the sea, frowning. He'd been through some of this with a doctor years ago, and had since given up. He didn't like talking about how nothing had changed. There was no point. "It makes my head hurt."

"Anything else?"

"And I get irritable."

"Yeah, I've noticed," she said dryly. "What else?"

"I can't concentrate," he bit out.

"And numbers, finances, they give you the most trouble."

"I can't ... I can't hang on to a thought about it for long enough to make decisions."

"And it's high pressure," she said, pushing.

"Yes."

"I think it might have less to do with you having trouble understanding the financial side of things and more to do with you having a harder time focusing on things that stress you out."

An uncomfortable tightness invaded his stomach. "It does not stress me out. I just ... The answers are there in my brain but I can't seem to make a fast decision. I can't find the answer in time. Or at all." And the more he thought about it, the less able he was to reach out and grasp onto a thought firmly. It slipped away from him, hiding deep in the dark corners of his brain that seemed unknowable to him now.

"It does stress you out. Why haven't you talked to a doctor about this? I'm sure ..."

"I don't need to talk to a doctor," he said, something exploding inside of him. "Not again. I don't need to go and sit there, and outline the same problems and have some old man look at me with pity in his eyes as he tells me, again, that they may never go away. That I will never be the man I was. That I won't have all the answers, or a witty joke on hand. That I will never be able to take the reins of Vega as I should have been able to, because I will never be able to make snap decisions, or keep meticulous records."

He planted his hands on his desk and leaned in so that his face was a breath from hers. "I can't concentrate long enough to fill out a d.a.m.n report. How am I supposed to keep track of intricate financial details? Do you know the answer?" He pushed off and straightened, running his hand through his hair. "Do you?" he asked again, his voice sounding rougher this time, desperate. He loathed it. Despised himself in that moment. He was shaking. With anger. Fear.

"I ... I just don't know," she said softly. "But we can figure it out."

He swallowed hard, his chest seizing up tight. "Or maybe I should just concede to the fact that I can't."

She stood and slapped her palms down on his desk before rounding to the front, her blue eyes blazing. "No. That's ... that's just wrong, Eduardo. You can do this. You aren't stupid. What I said ... that was wrong, too. And I'll apologize for that willingly, with no ... coercion." Her face turned pink when she said that last part. "It's just a matter of figuring out loopholes. Shortcuts."

Anger burned in him. At her. At the world. "I shouldn't need them," he growled.

"But we all do sometimes," she said, her tone rising with his.

"Maybe you do, Hannah Weston, but I don't. I am Eduardo Vega, son of one of the greatest business minds that ever lived, and I sure as h.e.l.l should not need a shortcut."

"Then it's your pride keeping you from succeeding. Not your injury. Keep that in mind if you start losing a handle on things again. I can't help you if you won't accept help."

"I am accepting help," he shouted, well beyond his limits now. Beyond the point of sublimating his rage. "Why do you think I asked you here?"

Hannah came closer, not cowed by his outburst. "You didn't ask me here. You all but forced me and you know it. And you aren't accepting help. Did you think I would come in, take a look at things, make some investments and leave you?"

"Yes," he said, realizing as he spoke the word that it was true.

"Just leave you without solving the problem?"

"Yes," he said again. Because he hadn't wanted to admit there was a real problem. A reset. He'd been after a reset. To get everything back to a golden point so he could move forward, steering the ship, on course again.

That he would see Hannah, and remember who he was. Not just remember, but feel those same feelings. That amus.e.m.e.nt, that desire and ability to simply flip his middle finger at the world, enjoying his position of success, feeling invincible. Untouchable.

Far from that, he felt like he was drowning, reaching blindly for a hand. Hannah's hand. Praying she would be able to hold him above water.

Such weakness. Such horrifying, unendurable weakness.

"That can't happen, Eduardo," she said.

"Why not?" he asked, drained now, the anger, the fight, leaving him in a rush. Leaving him defeated.

He looked so bleak. Hannah had never seen that expression on his face before. Had never seen him look so tired. And in spite of the fact that she'd been determined to hang on to anger where he was concerned, she found in that moment she couldn't.

It had been easy to fight him, to rage at him while he was raging at her. But she saw beneath it now. Saw it for what it was.

"Because things have changed. You've changed." She wasn't telling him anything he didn't know. But she wondered if she was the first person, other than doctors, who'd been brave enough to tell the almighty Eduardo Vega the real and absolute truth he didn't want to hear. "And all you can do is work with what you have. Not what you wish you had, not what you once had, but what you have, here and now."

He shook his head. "I don't want to." It didn't sound petulant like it might have, it simply sounded dry. Resigned.

"Eduardo, you were always fun in your way. A bit of an a.s.s, I mean, enough of one that you blackmailed me into marrying you as a way to goad your father. But you were easygoing, outgoing. And you never would have taken the responsibility of running Vega seriously. You used to kill me with your smug smile and your dismissal of your duties. Everything was a game to you. And now ... now it's not. Now I believe you have it in you to do it. So yeah, maybe there are some other issues, but you can work around those. We can work around those."

He let out a slow, shaking breath. "So I am forced to confront the fact that I would never have chosen to live up to my full potential before, and now that I would ... now that I would, my potential is greatly diminished."

"That's not it at all." Her stomach tightened, that fierce feeling of empathy, of connection, she'd felt with him that day his mother had arrived at the house intensified. Until that moment she hadn't felt closer to him since they'd slept together. If anything, she'd felt like any connection they might have had had been severed. But now it was back, and it was stronger.

He laughed. "It's not? Enlighten me then, Hannah."

"It will only be that if you insist on beating your head against a brick wall you could walk around if you weren't so stubborn. If you weren't letting your pride have control."

He raised his head, dark eyes glittering. "Pride is the one thing I still have."

She shook her head. "It's not. Trust me."

"It's myself I don't trust," he said, his eyes blank. "I don't know my own mind."

"Then learn it. When you're ready." She walked past him and out the door of the office. She was feeling ... too much. Feeling in general. Tomorrow they would go back to Barcelona. She could get back to the business of seeing him as business. She could forget that this weekend ever happened.

She had to.

CHAPTER NINE.

EDUARDO drew a hand over his face, fighting the anger, the frustration that was mounting inside of him. Then he gave up, giving it free rein as he pushed every piece of paper off his desk in a broad sweep and watched them all flutter to the floor.

He took a sharp breath, trying to gain a hold on himself. Trying to satisfy the dark, uncontrollable feelings that were firing through his veins. He put his head down and pushed his fingers through his hair, trying, desperately to think of what he'd just read.

Nothing. There was nothing. A void. A blank void that the information had fallen into and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get it back.

He let out a growl of frustration and picked his paperweight up from his desk, hurling it at the wall. Not even that helped. Nothing helped.

He pushed back from his desk and put his hands on his head as he paced.

The door to his office opened and Hannah walked in, the corners of her lips turned down. "Are you okay?"

Something in him shifted when he saw Hannah. It had been three weeks since they'd been back from his ranch. Three weeks of living together like strangers. Of pretending they'd never touched each other. That he'd never been inside her.

It was slowly driving him crazy. The financial reports from his retail stores were finishing the job. Quickly.

"Do I look okay?" he asked, moving his hand in a broad stroke in front of him, indicating the papers on the floor.

"No," she said, closing the door behind her. "What's up?"

"I can't do it, Hannah." The words burned his throat. "I can't remember. I can't ..."

"Hey, take a breath."

"I did take a breath," he said through clenched teeth. "Then I realized it didn't fix anything so I destroyed my office instead."

"Productive."